Let's face it: there aren't enough women in movies. The 2013 year was especially dismal for female frontrunners, accounting for a mere 16 percent of the directors, writers, executive producers, producers, editors and cinematographers in the top 250 grossing movies, according to the Center for the Study of Women in Television & Film's Celluloid Ceiling report.
And women directed only 6 percent, compared to the previous 9 percent, of the top films last year.
Researchers behind the study measured Hollywood's gender bias using cartoonist Alison Bechdel's test - originally from a 1985 strip from her "Dykes To Watch Out For" series. If the movie has at least two named women in the picture, they have a conversation with each other at some point, and that conversation isn't about a male character, then it passes the bare minimum criteria necessitating a woman presence.
Among 1,794 films from 1970 to 2013, 56 percent passed the test. Analyzing films released from 1999 to 2013, films that passed the Bechdel Test had a median budget that was 16 percent lower than the median budget of all films, FiveThirtyEight Life reported.
Movie insiders blame economics.
"There are fewer risks being taken now," Gale Anne Hurd, producer behind "The Terminator" and "Aliens," told Entertainment Weekly. "Sadly, it's generally true that the last people into the tent are the first people booted out when things get rough."
Or is the real issue related to supply and demand?
"If the percentage of available talent is small, then the percentage of serious candidates is small," "Catching Fire" producer Nina Jacobson said. "It's hard to break the cycle."
And there are double standards to deal with.
"There are so many male directors that if one is given a shot to succeed and doesn't, it's an anomaly," Hurd pointed out. "But if a woman gets a shot at a high-profile film and isn't perceived as having succeeded, then that negative experience is applied to all women."
